Late May 2012
Jeff was pleased with himself, all things considered. He got a drunk Annie into her bed with less awkwardness than expected, and her scotch would put her to sleep soon enough. Win win all around – at least for Jeff.
"Where are we, the Dreamatorium?" Annie hiccupped. "Run simulation stop room from spinning!"
"You're not that trippy, Annie," Jeff assured. "And you're in your bedroom at home."
"Home? That's a laugh!" Annie punctuated with a bitter drunk laugh. "Greendale was my home for three years, now it's gone! Just like all the other homes!"
It'd been a month since their expulsion and Annie only had a few rants about it so far, so maybe she was overdue. It didn't make it less uncomfortable for Jeff, though. "Well, once the universe gets off its ass and gets us back in there, you can tell Greendale all that yourself," he said to try and set up his exit.
"We're not coming back, don't you get it? You lose your home, you never get it back!" Annie argued. "My parents' house was a good home for 10 years! Then all the fighting and pills started, and that was it! Then I got rehab, then Dildopolis, and now this place! This place where I lived in a blanket fort on day one! And you sang with the Dean instead of moving one little box for me!"
"That….wasn't exactly how I meant to play hooky," Jeff reminded, with no better excuse at the moment. Annie groaned incoherently, looking like she was ready to drift off – but she just got sad again.
"I don't remember what it's like to have a real home, Jeff. I can't even use Greendale as a substitute anymore! I got this place, but it's more Troy and Abed's home! It's not mine, really! I…..where's my home, Jeff? I never had one, did I?"
Even people harder than Annie got this sad while drunk sometimes. If Jeff was one of them, he didn't care to remember – and forgetting Annie's sadness would be harder than usual tonight. Luckily she finally went to sleep and would forget everything by the time her hangover passed.
Jeff wasn't too drunk that night, so it was another matter for him.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Annie woke up without the lingering effects of any influence. It was just a nice, normal Saturday morning, which was a relief after this past Friday. Jeff, Troy and Abed all missed school yesterday, so taking their notes was more time consuming than usual.
When she got home, Troy and Abed were locked into Troy's room/the old Dreamatorium and wouldn't let Annie come in, even after she gave them notes and soup. Jeff was the same way too when she came over to give him her notes. Granted, Annie spent the rest of the day in peace and quiet – with Troy and Abed not even coughing that much – but it was still weird, even by her declining standards for weirdness.
Nevertheless, it was Saturday now and their weird 24 hour cold was likely over, so Annie left her bedroom to check. Indeed, Troy and Abed were at their recliners and looked pretty normal – despite not having costumes on. "Morning, guys. All better now?" Annie asked casually.
"We seem to be. Our recovery wasn't as shocking as Disney destroying John Carter, but it was less surprising at the end too," Abed compared. "And just as fake and filled with betrayal."
"Fake? Abed, are you guys still sick?" Annie feared.
"Abed, you weren't supposed to spoil it until Jeff got here!" Troy complained, then backtracked. "No, no, it's not your fault. If I could lie better about us and Jeff not being sick, it wouldn't have come to this."
"True. But by instinct, I blame Taylor Kitsch more," Abed offered.
"I think I should start blaming you more right now!" Annie accused. "You faked being sick?"
"We can explain," Abed started, then paused. "That should have been Jeff's cue. This is already my third worst directing job ever. Can you take five while we storyboard reshoots, Annie?"
"No, I don't think I'll-" Annie stopped when she heard a knock. A few minutes ago, this might have puzzled her. But now she knew Jeff was there, and was prepared to smack his chest when she opened the door.
"Ow! You smacked a sick person! And I thought you were a good nurse," Jeff stated in an obviously fake sick voice – which Annie should have seen through yesterday.
"It's too late, Jeff, she forced the truth out of us," Abed covered up.
"Oh come on, you couldn't have held out for two more minutes?" Jeff groaned normally. "I guess I shouldn't be that shocked after yesterday."
"Hey, I almost broke way more of her stuff than you! Okay, maybe one more thing isn't way more, but it could have been four! It could have been four! Curse these graceful hands of mine!" Troy cursed.
"Guys, that's enough!" Annie restored order. "I'm already mad that you all….faked a sick day. What the hell were you doing instead of learning, and what's this about breaking my stuff? You know what, answer the last one first!"
Jeff was actually the first to clear the air. "Annie, what did you do a year ago today…..when the light hit the gloom on the grave? God, you'd better get that right…."
The clue and Jeff's humiliation was enough to give Annie the answer. "Annie's move! I moved here a year ago today!" she remembered. "But what does that-"
"We'll get there pretty soon," Jeff assured before leading her over to her bedroom. "Now, will you agree that all your stuff is right where you left it? Nothing is out of place or missing or anything?"
Annie studied her room and all her stuff with a growing dread. Yet if anything was missing, Jeff wouldn't have encouraged her to look through everything. This calmed her down enough to see that all her things were still there. "All right, everything's still here. So why is that an actual surprise, Jeff?" Annie zeroed in.
"The point is everything is fine. So keep that in mind, okay?" Jeff requested, leading her back to the living room. "Is the footage ready, guys?"
"Yep, we spent all night editing it over notes and soup, but it's ready!" Troy chimed in as Annie saw a DVD in his hand. As Jeff got Annie to sit at the living room table, Abed put down his laptop there and Troy quickly put the DVD inside.
When the movie started, Annie saw Troy on screen inside the living room. According to the time and date on the bottom right, this had been filmed at 7:30 am yesterday – 20 minutes after Annie left for school. When she thought she left a sick Troy and Abed alone, fearing they would parody movie hallucinations and wreck the place.
Instead, Troy looked healthy and so did Abed right behind him. For a second, Annie thought she was delusional enough to see Jeff in the shot.
"Dear Future Annie, greetings from the distant past," Troy started on the video. "If machines have taken over, tell future Troy pretending to be the machine from Aliens won't fool them! I'd tell him myself, but you know him, he just won't listen! If you already killed him because you were hungry or he wouldn't shut up, then disregard this message."
"Oh, she'll want to disregard it, don't worry," Jeff said as he came into the shot, which made Annie forget all about the machines. "Now then, the other message for her?"
"Oh, right, right!" Troy remembered. "Annie, by now you know we're not sick today. We just pretended to be so we could stay home. But we're doing nothing but putting all your things into boxes, bringing them downstairs, carrying them back here and putting everything in your room. Like we should have done a lot earlier a year ago."
"This is a classic redemption story arc. Not on the level of Disney redeeming itself for John Carter, but this is much more plausible," Abed further explained. "A year ago tomorrow, we drove you crazy when you moved here. We put you in a blanket fort, made you think you were meant to live alone, and acted like we didn't value you enough to adapt to your needs. In addition, Jeff preferred being at the Gap and being blackmailed by the Dean, rather than lifting one box for you."
"It sounds better the way I was going to tell it!" Jeff pouted.
"You came up with this idea, I figured I could take the load off for you," Abed explained before turning back to the camera. "Anyway, future Annie, we all wanted to honor your one year anniversary in this apartment. So we figured your second year here should start much better than your first year. That's why while you're gone, we're packing your stuff, taking it downstairs and then moving it into your real room right away, unlike last year. And Jeff will lift several boxes and risk breaking a sweat for you, unlike last year."
"It sounded less ominous the way I was going to tell it!" Jeff spoke up again.
"You're going to break a sweat, but your brain and mouth don't have to, okay?" Troy informed. "This was your idea, so they've got to tell us what to do sweat free, all right?"
"Fine, they command you to wrap up the intro. Then we'll pack everything up, carryit downstairs and back, then put everything back where it was before she gets home. It should really take three hours, but I'll give us a good seven or eight, tops," Jeff quipped.
"Perfect! We can get to seven if we start right now!" Troy cheered. "One last triumph for humanity before the machines take over! Maybe this could inspire future Annie's resistance movement!"
"In that case, I'm practicing my salute to the machines when we're on break," Jeff warned as he led Troy away, and fended off accusations of being a traitor to mankind.
The video then switched to a scene inside Annie's room, as Jeff, Troy and Abed were all inside. Annie was now set to kill them for being in her room and touching her stuff without permission, no matter what the reasons.
Yet her bloodlust was contained when she saw Jeff take pictures of all her things, just so he'd know where to put them back later. Then when Jeff put them into boxes, he handled them very carefully and didn't even joke about the girly items. He even stopped Troy and Abed from playing games with her stuff a few times, although he wasn't as successful in others – but he made sure nothing was broken, nonetheless.
After they packed up the items on her cabinets, they moved on to carefully remove her posters. Annie thought that her Charlie St. Cloud poster looked more wrinkled last night, but was too busy being worried about sick roommates and a sick Jeff to notice. Those crafty sons of…..well, maybe they shouldn't be called nasty names just yet. Not right away.
When it came time to pack her clothes and under items, Jeff couldn't quite pack them, yet refused to let Troy or Abed do it. "Abed, you promised this would be edited out, remember?" present Jeff whispered to present Abed.
"I said I'd cut it if the movie didn't need the comedy. I cut out the entire second hour of this segment, so I figured that was a fair compromise," Abed reasoned. Jeff just groaned and finally fast forwarded the movie, until it got to him and Trobed sealing up the boxes.
Since they didn't pack everything, there were fewer boxes than in the real move last year. Yet there was still more than enough for Troy, Abed and Jeff to carry. Despite how horrible that was to Jeff, the movie still showed him carrying down a box at a time as carefully as possible. At least he was more careful than Troy and Abed were in a few scenes.
After some admittedly funny moments of Jeff struggling with the boxes, and Troy and Abed titling the camera around, the scene cut to Jeff, Troy and Abed standing next to the whole pile of boxes in the lobby. Troy and Abed laid the camera down and performed an obviously scripted exchange, while Jeff was barely recovering in the background.
"Well, fellow Annie roommate, we got all her things into her old new building! Whatever do we do now?" Troy asked.
"Oh, I know! We set up a blanket fort and stay in our old bunk bed room, while putting the Dreamatorium ahead of her! It won't be downsized for another year, so what's the harm?" Abed acted.
"If my suit was harmed or one of my hairs got moved, I'm suing all my co-stars! Just so we're clear!" Jeff called out in an obviously unscripted line.
"What are you saying, fellow Annie roommate?" Troy stuck to the script. "This is the girl who'll master buttered noodles in just seven months! She'll be our script girl in half our movies, play in the Dreamatorium when one of us can't, and give up a half-hour of studying a week to hang with us! 45 minutes if there's just two diorama's that week! If she's going to do that much for us, why can't we show her how much we want her around too?"
"I don't think I should be around you guys for a while after tomorrow! Just so we're clear!" Jeff kept ad-libbing.
"You're right, my first roommate," Abed delivered as scripted. "Perhaps the blanket fort would be a better fit for us, not her! She's already slept above a decadent marital aid store. Sleeping below blankets instead of snuggling under them is beneath her. Pardon the pun."
"She will, original roommate," Troy predicted. "After we bring her stuff up without making her think she's still alone. Now let's get back to work without Tweeting it!"
"My hands still need a five minute or five hour break. Just on the slim chance you care!" Jeff chimed in. But the scene cut to Jeff carrying the boxes back upstairs anyway.
Troy and Abed were humming suspenseful music in the background, trying to make his quest more like an action movie. Yet they were discreet enough that Jeff didn't get annoyed enough to drop any boxes. Although he clearly strained under the pressure, the montage ended with all of his boxes back upstairs just as they were.
In the end, the trio returned the boxes to Annie's room and began unpacking – just as Troy and Abed did a year ago today. But this time, Annie could actually see them do it, and even saw Jeff there as a bonus.
Jeff carefully studied the cell phone pictures he took of Annie's room, putting everything back exactly where it was. His hands were clearly straining from all their actual work, yet he made himself get the job done. When it was over, he collapsed onto Annie's bed – and Annie struggled not to blush at the imagery.
"Well, that's it, guy who's no longer my only roommate!" Troy cheered. "Now Annie's going to come home to the perfect room! For the 363'rd day in a row!"
"I'm seriously considering letting one of you drive me home. In my Lexus. That's how exhausted my arms are," Jeff mumbled into the covers.
"It's only 2 pm, so we can do half a wacky road trip comedy before Annie gets home. Let me put away the camera with all the editing equipment in Troy's room, and we can get going," Abed laid out.
"Yay," Jeff mock cheered, but got himself up to face the camera with Troy and Abed.
"We herby dub this apartment 'Troanniebed'! Long may it reign!" Troy proclaimed.
"Welcome home, Annie!" all three men called out, despite Jeff being slow and off key. But that was how the movie ended, nevertheless. Back in the present, Troy, Abed and Jeff waited for a rather still Annie to give her review.
"You went in my room without my consent. You packed up my things. You walked them up and down the staircase. And you unpacked them again…..all for that?" Annie recounted.
"Well….if that was our best idea, you should be glad we didn't use the bad ones! Right?" Troy quivered. "It was Jeff's idea, anyway, he's the idea man!"
"You're phrasing it like we weren't already thinking of ways to honor her anniversary. We were, but Jeff gave us the winning idea. Let's close those plot loopholes before Annie delivers her Gibson-worthy vengeance on us," Abed nitpicked.
"Well, that bus feels really good being crushed above me, thanks," Jeff mocked.
"You guys….that might be the sweetest thing you've ever done," Annie raised their hopes, before closing them with, "But it's definitely the dumbest thing I've ever seen! I've seen Kickpuncher movies that were smarter than that!"
"If you're including Kickpuncher 7, you shouldn't say things you can't take back," Abed warned.
"It's not our fault, Annie, we got too much of a head start!" Troy excused. "We spent weeks thinking of good anniversary stuff, and it clearly made us lazy! Enough to take an idea from Jeff!"
"Yeah, getting thrown under the bus was so much fun the first time, please do it again! Sequels really are better than the original!" Jeff rolled his eyes.
"If you're including non Star Trek, Terminator, Lord of the Rings, Batman and original Star Wars sequels, you shouldn't say things you can't take back," Abed warned again.
"And there's the sweet part!" Annie brushed aside. "You spent all that time trying to do something special….for me! And you used a really weird idea instead of doing nothing! Why would you do all that? You didn't have to make up for my move that bad, so why?" She then focused on Jeff and asked, "And why the hell did you give themideas?"
"Because we all wanted you to know this was your home," Jeff finally answered. But he went back and said, "Okay, that sounded less cheesy in my head. I think. Abed, you mind washing that out with some clinical movie talk?"
Annie didn't know if an Abed movie metaphor would calm her down or make her more confused. However, it became mute when Abed actually spoke.
"Annie, do you know why I didn't live with Troy to end the first season?" Abed asked. "I thought too much time together would make our friendship jump the shark. I admit to being more naïve then. But I still feared it when we finally lived together to start season three. Yet instead, you gave us new dynamics and new dimensions to explore as characters. We could have survived living by ourselves by season three, but everything could have still jumped the shark. With you here, that hasn't been a problem anymore."
"My Abed to English translating is getting better. Should I take a shot at decoding that?" Jeff wondered.
"No….no I think I got it," Annie said while biting back a smile.
"Translating Abed's my thing, anyway," Troy reminded Jeff before focusing on Annie. "What he means is that me and Abed already made this place cool and awesome. But it wasn't a real home until you got here. To be honest, we were surprised you made it one." Annie was skeptical on where Troy was going here, yet since this was one of his "smart moments" she figured she'd hear him out.
"I mean, you said it yourself, you thought you'd get sick of living with guys like us! But you stuck around, and not because you had nowhere to go but sex shops! You like living with us and putting up with us and even playing with us! Knowing someone else could love being around us so much….it's not something we're used to. We haven't always been around people who can do that, you know." Annie did know, chiding herself for forgetting she wasn't the only one with that problem.
"But Jeff said you thought this was me and Abed's home, not yours too! We had to show you that's not true! That's why touching your stuff and moving it like grownups makes sense! You're one of us, you know that stuff by now! One of us, Annie!"
Since Troy was slipping back into weird mode, Annie had to go to Jeff for answers now. "Why did you make him think I said that stuff, Jeff?" she asked ominously.
"Because I remember what you say when you're drunk better than you do. Like those times in May and early June, for instance," Jeff recalled, which did ring a few bells for Annie.
"Okay, fair enough….but if I said it when I was drunk, obviously I didn't mean it," Annie concluded.
"Annie, drunk rookies like you can believe that if you want. But legendary pros like me know way better," Jeff bragged. "You haven't felt at home since you were 10, and I wanted to make sure your roomies fixed that for your anniversary present. They were already trying to think of something for you before I got there….I just consulted them. And that's what we came up with."
"And it had nothing to do with you playing sick on me last year?" Annie questioned.
"20 percent at best. Maybe 30," Jeff conceded. "But the other 70 percent is important here! I can take or leave that home stuff, but I'm not you! You should be living somewhere that's safe and comfortable with people who love you! For some reason I don't get, you haven't had that for a long time. But for some other strange reason, this is that home for you, Annie. And to their credit, these guys know this isn't that home for them without you."
As Troy and Abed nodded their agreement, Annie took it in quietly and teared up accordingly at her friends. Yet Abed broke the silence by stating, "Plus we figured we should honor your first full year here, since you probably won't have a second one."
"Abed, is this really the time for one of your twist endings?" Jeff warned.
"It's too predictable to be a twist, Jeff. Once we graduate next May, Annie will be off to graduate school or a huge internship. Or another big opportunity that takes her far away from here, as per her character arc. Once she has that happy ending, she won't need to live here anymore. She'll come back for a few guest spots in Season Five to boost the ratings, but the damage will be done to our numbers by then," Abed figured.
"Yep, really not the time for your twist endings," Jeff said – not as inconspicuously as he wanted.
"No, it isn't," Annie actually agreed. "Abed, do you really think I would just leave you guys behind like that? Especially after today?"
"With your ambition and how you were sheltered from the world until Greendale, you'd have to take a major job far away for your ending. It'd betray your character on a Disney-style level if you didn't," Abed laid out.
"And if that day comes, it'll kill me to stay in character!" Annie insisted. "But until then, I'm not leaving any of you! I mean it," she stressed while looking at an uncertain Jeff this time. "I don't care if I have to drive three hours to some big job! I'm not leaving here that easily….and I'm not leaving my three best friends in the whole world."
"The three best friends that anybody can have? Original setting for a Hangover reference, I'll give you that. A lot more original than Hangover Part II, anyway," Abed rambled.
Yet even that didn't stop Annie from going over and hugging Troy and Abed tightly. Once they hugged her back for a while, she went over to Jeff and did the same before he put his defenses up. When he started to hug her too, only then did she pull away – and smack his chest harder than usual.
"That doesn't mean you can EVER move my stuff without permission AGAIN! Got it?" For good measure, Annie smacked Troy and Abed's chests extra hard too. Yet after they squirmed from the pain, she hugged them even tighter once they got the message.
"I'm not going anywhere, you jerks," Annie reassured while all but crushing Troy and Abed together.
"Gah, we might be going to the hospital at this rate," Troy gasped out. "Can we do our puppet show with broken backs?"
"Your what?" Annie asked as she finally let go.
"Our puppet show was the one thing you really loved last year. It gives us no choice but to do a callback, health permitting," Abed disclosed.
"Health granted! Go, get behind those blankets, I've got to see what Princess Annie's been up to!" the human Annie squealed as she sent Troy and Abed away. She then hopped over to Jeff, who backed away a bit.
"Whoh, my back's been through enough around here, thanks!" Jeff warned to fend off a mega hug.
"It's okay, you can sit down in the blanket fort and watch with me!" Annie offered. "For all we know, Princess Annie might get haunted by the ghost of Horsebot 3000."
"Hey, he wouldn't get off his horse heaven cloud for a mere haunting! I mean….it's common sense, really," Jeff lamely defended as Annie rolled her eyes and led him to the blanket fort.
By the time they sat at the bunk beds, Troy and Abed were behind the blankets with their stick figure puppets. As they did last year, they remade Annie's recent exploits as a fantasy story – but it worked better since she wasn't miserable before this show. Plus she had Jeff there to watch it with her this time.
"You know, you didn't haveto make up for last year," Annie muttered to Jeff during a slow part of the show. "It'd have been nice to have you there, but I needed to read them the riot act myself, not you. And it was hardly the worst way you've let me down." To brush that aside, Annie reminded him, "Plus the Dean made you suffer enough, so that was enough revenge for me."
"Thank God," Jeff breathed out his relief. Yet despite being left off the hook, he kept going.
"Troy and Abed really were trying to do something for you before I talked to them," Jeff reminded. "They didn't need to be prompted or nagged by me or anyone. They just love you and they'd do anything for you, no questions asked. That includes showing you how….you'll always be at home with them around. So I figured I could take a page from that, or something."
"Take a page how?"Annie wondered, daring to hope Jeff would answer with real, uncomplicated words. But he stayed there and took a deep breath, so Annie figured he was making himself back off again.
But Jeff didn't back off. He didn't use words, but kissing her on the cheek – and initiating such close contact for the first time with her – spoke volumes anyway.
"There. Call it a housewarming gift that came a year late," Jeff said, after they stayed breathless for several seconds. His unspoken sentiment was that it was even later than that – at least that's what Annie briefly believed. Yet there was no point assuming and reading into things like that – not in this moment, anyway.
"I think I'll do that," Annie finally answered Jeff out loud. She then resumed watching Troy and Abed's show, yet it didn't have her complete attention. She also watched her hand hover near Jeff's, until she ultimately dropped it there and saw that Jeff didn't flinch away from it.
Jeff opened his mouth to say something, but Abed interrupted in his normal voice instead of his Princess Annie voice. "Were you going to say 'Welcome home, Annie,' Jeff? We already used that line, and we've long since beaten the 'home' theme way into the ground." After a pause, Abed added, "Insert ironic John Carter reference here."
"All right, you do that, then get Princess Annie back into action. Greendalia won't survive the Glee-pitar invasion by itself," Jeff reminded.
"He's right! Get Horsebot 4000 out there until she gets back! Even Horsebot 4500 will do! God help us all!" Troy lamented.
Jeff and Annie settled back down to watch the show, and Jeff didn't grumble too much about the new Horsebots after a while. And when he wound up crying anyway, Annie didn't draw too much attention to it. Although he tried to make an exit afterwards, Jeff stayed anyway as Annie collaborated with Troy and Abed on the next show. He even stayed the rest of the afternoon as movies, games and other Troy/Abed madness ensued.
By the time it finally ended, Jeff finally left and Annie finally hugged Troy and Abed out, Annie snuggled into her bed for a good night's sleep. And it was a sleep unlike any she could remember in 12 years.
Annie wasn't used to the kind of warm, loved and safe feeling one has when they sleep at home. Her real home didn't provide that for years – and since her parents' love for her was always conditional, perhaps it never really did. Rehab and Dildopolis certainly never made her loved or safe as she slept either. With all that, it was harder for Annie to believe it could happen here.
Yet this sleep came after celebrating with the three people that meant more to her than anything. Two of them were roommates that she loved like brothers, who loved her in the same way as only they could – and who actually turned the volume down on Inspector Spacetime reruns tonight. The other was….Jeff Winger.
Having those memories flood her, along with the others from this apartment since last year, lulled Annie into a unfamiliar rest. One in which she could fully relax because this was her sanctuary, her refuge – and maybe the only place she'd ever lived where she was unconditionally accepted and treasured. She learned how to make her roommates feel that way here, and they did the same for her – like other important people in her life.
For the first time since she was old enough to remember, Annie Edison knew in her heart she was sleeping right at home.
But if they moved her stuff like that one more time, she might not mind living alone again.